Damian Thompson is Editor of Telegraph Blogs and a columnist for the Daily Telegraph. He was once described by The Church Times as a "blood-crazed ferret". He is on Twitter as HolySmoke. His latest book is The Fix: How addiction is taking over your world. He also writes about classical music for The Spectator.

Save us from online nonentities with celebrity egos

So how was 2013 for you? Not sure? Don’t worry: a new Facebook algorithm collates your “personal highlights” based on the “likes” and comments you’ve received. To quote our blogger Jamie Bartlett, who studies social media for the think tank Demos, “I can now foist my wonderful year on undeserving friends, forcing them to relive my glories – which presumably they know already, given that their 'likes’ created the list anyway”.

If you’re not a Facebook user, that probably doesn’t mean much. So here’s Bartlett’s summary. Social media want to turn us into narcissists – and it’s working: “Young people spend hours pruning Facebook 'likes’, and photoshopping unflattering photos. There are whole businesses dedicated to brand You. Yuk.”

Yuk indeed. We already know that Facebook, Twitter and Google sometimes channel our personal data to advertisers and governments. But equally worrying is the endless notching up of our “personalised love-in”, as Bartlett calls it.

The internet is now crawling with men and women – mostly but not exclusively young – who behave like Broadway divas screaming for hand-sculpted truffles and Mongolian mineral water in their dressing rooms. Or they fancy themselves as billionaire CEOs. Or possibly guests on Question Time receiving rapturous applause for their screechy right-on platitudes.

And all from the privacy of their malodorous bedrooms.

When did this narcissism take hold? In his book Mediated, Thomas De Zengotita draws our attention to filmed interviews with ordinary people in the Fifties: “They lean into the microphone and glance awkwardly around… they speak in semi-formal tones, as if reciting.” In contrast, when the news cameras capture the modern man or woman in the street, “they are total pros, laughing in the right places, comments and mannerisms pitched just right for the occasion”.

De Zengotita was writing a decade ago, before Facebook went public and Twitter was invented. “Regular folk”, as he calls them, had picked up the flashing smile, flick of the hair and mwah mwah from camcorders, karaoke and reality TV. Consumers had switched from keeping up with the Joneses to mimicking the lifestyles of the super-rich. Stir in the excitement of accumulating YouTube followers and being retweeted by a Famous Person and suddenly you’re a celeb. At least in your own head.

We’re not talking about harmless narcissism, though. On the contrary, the human wreckage of fake celebrity keeps piling up. Consider the plane passenger who earned global notoriety over Christmas by tweeting a “joke” about Aids and Africa. How could a PR executive be so stupid? But her Twitter account revealed dozens of “edgy” one-liners: the silly girl thought she was some sort of stand-up comedian, a sadly common delusion.

There’s a parallel with addiction. Most people can police their behaviour, but technology seizes on addictive or narcissistic tendencies and magnifies them. Already, countless teenagers are developing celebrity egos that will render them unemployable – except by their own short-lived start-up, of which they will naturally be CEO or Senior Consulting Editor in Chief.

No wonder employers prefer immigrants who, in addition to being prepared to work long hours for low pay, don’t have the slightest inclination to throw a faux-celeb hissy fit on Twitter. Good for them. Frankly, it’s hard to feel sorry for our home-grown online narcissists. Let them air-kiss each other in the dole queue until reality sinks in – if it ever does.

Crunch time for the Ordinariate

New Year’s Day is a milestone for the Ordinariate, the religious structure for ex-Anglicans set up by Pope Benedict. That is when it gains its first convent – made up of 10 former Anglican nuns who will be known as the Sisters of the Blessed Virgin, based in Birmingham. This will be a crucial year for the Ordinariate: it now has its own Mass translation, in the style of Cranmer, which Rome is keen to promote. What’s missing is self-confidence. The Ordinariate will survive if it has the guts to ignore its powerful enemies in the Catholic and Anglican Churches. Says my source: “We need more leadership and less middle-management.”

No escape from Downton Abbey

I’ve lost my Downton Abbey virginity. Loathing costume dramas, I’d escaped the programme until my dear sister, without warning, switched on the Christmas special. There followed seven hours of actors speaking
21st-century lines in 21st-century accents while dolled up in 1920s fancy dress. The future Edward VIII appeared and everyone said “mark my words, he’ll meet some American vixen and abdicate” or something similarly prescient. Fortunately there were ad breaks every three minutes, during which my sister flipped over to a compilation of historical dramas “what Ernie wrote” for Morecambe and Wise. Then it was back to that wretched ballroom. How I longed for Eric to burst in, jiggle his specs and throw the Dowager Countess of Grantham over his shoulder.

Anna turns the air a tawdry blue

It’s not often that a Tory minister makes a joke that’s unsuitable for a family newspaper. But on Marr this week, Anna Soubry said something about Nigel Farage that I can’t repeat here. You won’t find it difficult to track down.

Soubry is minister for defence personnel; her quip would make an old-fashioned soldier blush. It did ring a bell, however. Where had I heard that sort of joke before?

Then it hit me. Soubry was saying exactly the sort of thing about Farage that BBC comics say about Tories. Mark Steel, Dara O'Briain, Jeremy Hardy – all of them are paid from the licence fee to direct vulgar abuse at the Right.

It’s rather funny, somehow, that instead of blocking her ears to their “humour”, the arch-moderniser Ms Soubry tried to copy them and made an embarrassing hash of it. The whole thing says a lot about her, about progressive Tories, and about what Dave’s mates say in private about anyone who might even be tempted to vote Ukip.

Look out for flying custard

Travelling coach, as they say in America, is about to become an even more unpleasant experience. Some airlines are installing thinner seats and reducing chair incline from three inches to two – increasing their profits enormously. This seems a cruel trick to play on travellers who are amply proportioned; fat people get so cross on planes, especially when the ventilation fails. Of course, no such problem confronts plumper customers who are important enough to turn left. A British Airways source tells me that on “special flights” the chef prepares a flagon of chilled vanilla custard “to soothe the nerves of one particularly jittery VIP”. And who might that be? “We don’t disclose such details,” he replies sharply.